Neoclassical tearing mode stabilization by electron cyclotron current drive in EAST tokamak experiments

The stabilization of the m/n= 2/1 neoclassical tearing mode (NTM) by electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) has been carried out in EAST H-mode discharges, where m/n is the poloidal/toroidal mode number. The experimental results are reported for the first time in this paper. To facilitate the experimental study, the magnetic island (NTM) is generated by a sufficiently large amplitude of the externally applied resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP). After switching off the RMP, the NTM exists due to the bootstrap current perturbation, with the magnetic island width being about 5 cm for the local equilibrium bootstrap current fraction being larger than 10%. By applying the localized ECCD later, the NTM is fully suppressed if the radial misalignment between the magnetic island and the ECCD location is sufficiently small. The stabilizing effect depends on both the radial misalignment and the applied electron cyclotron wave power. More importantly, it is found that the NTM can be avoided when applying ECCD earlier during the ramp-up phase of the RMP amplitude, if ECCD is localized around the O-point of the magnetic island, indicating an efficient way for avoiding locked modes that can lead to the major disruptions of tokamak plasmas.